It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring, half-realising only.
"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose it means we shall really have to send an army of ours—an English Army—over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?"
Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider interests of their sex.... Not mere—— Here, by way of illustration, this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady Principal with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking pats of butter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and all that was left of the marmalade.
For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to be or not to be seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the hill.
"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry buttered toast into narrow strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her.
"But I won't 'help to salt, help to sorrow' for you," she went on talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing about a wedding, Taff—I mean one of the curious things about a wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay proverb and tag that you've ever heard. 'Marriage is a——"
"Not 'lottery,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. 'Few prizes! Many blanks!'" she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The reaction had come at the right moment.
"'Happy is the Bride that the sun shines on,' then," amended Leslie. "You'll be glad to hear it's shining like Billy-oh this morning."
"I saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open casement. "And I shall be getting 'Married in white, sure to be right,' too!"
The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a butterfly's wing and fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white Princesse slip—that was new, bought by her in a hurry the day before!—and the white silk stockings, and the little white suède shoes.